Geneva Freeport
Geneva Freeport (Ports Francs et Entrêpots de Genève SA) is a warehouse complex in Geneva, Switzerland for the storage of art and other valuables and collectibles.
Some say it's the "premier place" to store valuable works of art, and "they come for the security and stay for the tax treatment".[1]
It is the oldest and largest freeport facility, and the ones with the most artworks. According to Jean-Rene Saillard of the British Fine Art Fund, "It would be probably the best museum in the world if it was a museum".[2]
In 2013, the Freeport held about 1.2 million works of art.[3] As well as art and gold bars, there are about three million bottles of wine.[1]
In 2009, the first gallery inside the Freeport was opened by Simon Studer. Other galleries include those run by Sandra Recio.[1] In 2013, it was reported that a 10,000 sq m extension would open in 2014.[2]
In January 2016, officers from the art crimes squad of the Italian carabinieri, working in collaboration with Swiss authorities, raided a storage unit that the British antiquities dealer Robin Symes rented at the Geneva Freeport. It was found to contain a vast haul of stolen antiquities, nearly all of which is believed to have been looted by the Medici gang from Etruscan-era and Roman-era archaeological sites in Italy and other locations over a period of at least forty years. Packed inside 45 crates, investigators discovered a vast collection of some 17,000 Greek, Roman and Etruscan artefacts, including two stunning Etruscan terracotta sarcophagi, topped by painted, life-sized reclining figures, hundreds of whole or fragmentary pieces of rare Greek and Roman pottery, statuary and bas-reliefs, fragments of a fresco from Pompeii, and a marble head of Apollo which is thought to have been looted from the Baths of Claudius, near Rome. The trove is estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds, with the head of Apollo alone valued at UK£30 million (approximately US$44 million). Symes is alleged to have hidden the objects away at the Freeport warehouse soon after his partner's death, in order to conceal them from the executors of his estate and thus keep their huge value out of any settlement.[4][5]
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References
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